


Entwined in Every Step I Take

by Ghostinthehouse



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Relationship, Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Less pining, M/M, More relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 06:36:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20110756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostinthehouse/pseuds/Ghostinthehouse
Summary: "You do know," he said after a long moment, "that angels can sense love, don't you?""Going to smite me down for it, angel?""I think you're quite smitten enough, without adding to it."





	Entwined in Every Step I Take

** 5000 years ago **

Crowley was slumped against the stern of the abandoned ark, knees half drawn up and arms draped limply across them.

Aziraphale settled beside him, folding his own legs neatly under his body. "You do know," he said after a long moment, "that angels can sense love, don't you?"

Crowley's face took on a haunted weariness. He glanced sideways at Aziraphale. "Going to smite me down for it?"

Aziraphale pursed his mouth, considered the sensation washing over him, and said primly, "I think you're quite smitten enough, without adding to it."

"Don't lie to me, angel. I'm a demon, I can sense lies."

"Exactly. I am an angel, and you are a demon. We're on opposite sides."

Crowley just looked at him like his heart was a scared mouse that the snake was hunting down. "Ssso?"

Aziraphale couldn't bring himself to meet that gaze. He lifted his head, staring up at the fading 'rain bow'. It was colourful enough, he supposed, but it didn't make up for the sheer devastation in Crowley's face and voice over losing the kids. "So we're only supposed to hate each other, not, not this. Whatever it is." Opposites, like the sides of a coin, forever linked and inseparable. A longing to spend time together, in any way that suits. A dovetailed joint of a relationship that doesn't look like it fits together, but does, somehow, stronger than other kinds of joining.

Crowley shrugged in a way that pulled all his long limbs askew. "Come back to me when you figure it out, angel."

Aziraphale flicked him a grateful glance and relaxed, just a little.

Crowley gave him the smallest of weary smiles in return, and retrieved a wineskin from the shadow of the ark. He drank a mouthful and passed it over. "To future encounters."

"To the future," Aziraphale echoed, chasing the words down with wine.

** 4000 years ago **

They were sitting in a little cook-shop in Thebes, sharing fig pastries and a pitcher of wine, and studying the inscription the angel had inspired over the doorway of the new library. "The house of healing for the soul," Aziraphale had called it, and Crowley sat back and watched him delight in his pastries.

Aziraphale wordlessly slipped the signet ring bearing his angelic sigil off and held it out. Crowley reached out hesitantly, feeling the hum of holiness radiating off it, and stopped short of actual touch.

"Oh, sorry, I had, um, a small change made. I, uh, look, here. Do you mind?" Aziraphale turned it and Crowley saw her own snake sigil (or something very like it) was now engraved on the inside of the band, where it would be hidden against the angel's skin when it was worn.

She looked up, startled, into Aziraphale's blue eyes, and caught the small, shy, scared smile lurking around them. "Figured it out, did you?" It had only taken him about a thousand years. Angel and demon, on opposite sides of one piece of metal, never to be divided.

The angel looked down, and away, and lied so clearly that Crowley could hear the meaning behind it. The words falling from his mouth might be, "I don't even like you." The meaning echoed that he cared very much.

Crowley braced herself and picked up the ring. It stung but didn't burn, to her relief, and she slid it back onto Aziraphale's hand. "You do," she teased gently, letting her own feelings spike in response. Aziraphale, she decided, was adorable when he blushed. "You'll have to get better at lying, angel. Then I won't have to say 'I do' for both of us."

** 3000 years ago **

Aziraphale found Crowley below a carving of a very familiar snake wound around a staff, his chiton dust-rimmed as he knelt in the courtyard to examine a sick little girl. He watched as the demon talked softly to her and made her giggle before climbing back to his feet and fetching the medicine she needed. As he stood, a tattoo on his left ankle became visible, looking at a glance like a miniature version of the sign above him.

Aziraphale waited until the courtyard was clear before he approached. "Isn't that a little - obvious?" he asked, nodding at the snake carving.

Crowley canted his head on one side and wrinkled his nose. "The local humans decided that that was going to be the symbol for healers. Not like I'm going to argue about it."

"Your influence, I presume?" Aziraphale glanced down at the tattoo and Crowley obligingly lifted his foot. Closer inspection revealed it to be a snake wrapped around a sword instead of a staff. An all too familiar sword that Aziraphale had once held, though it wasn't flaming.

"Nope," Crowley said, popping the p. "Just humans being humans. How about some lunch? I know a place..." He led the way down the street, talking easily about everything but his tattoo, while Aziraphale trailed behind, trying to absorb the gesture that the two of them were entwined in every step that Crowley took.

** 2000 years ago **

"Do you remember how it started?" Aziraphale asked.

Crowley stirred an empty oyster shell with one of their fingers. "You were kind. To them, the humans. You opened your heart, and you gave everything you could. I hadn't seen that in so long...."

"And then _you_ were kind_._ To _me_. It was the first time anyone was ever kind to me."

"And you returned it. I didn't know it was possible for anyone to be kind to me again. You know. After." Crowley washed the taste of praise away with a mouthful of wine. "Shut up about it will you? Bad for my reputation, seeing as I'm not an aardvark."

** 700 years ago **

Crowley was exhausted from the healing when they asked his name. That was his only excuse. They had asked, and he had panicked because he was doing good and slurred out the first angelic name that came to mind. His angel's name. "'Z'r'phale."

"S'Raphael?" They had repeated back to him, and in his exhaustion, he'd just nodded, already sinking into sleep. When he woke up, they were all calling him Raphael.

Blasted 14th century....

**A month ago**

Crowley's legs crumpled. He hit the ground and looked up in despair at Aziraphale, trying to absorb everything about his angel one last time. "It was nice knowing you," he told that angel of his.

That angel of his, who armoured himself in velveteen waistcoats and mild manners. Who built a fortress around himself of books and odd hours, and meals, and racks of wine so that he didn't have to step out of his protective, camouflaging softness.

That angel of his, who was soft, in the way that a steel fist heated white-hot and malleable is _soft. _The way that a flame dancing along a sword is soft and light and easy on the eyes. The way a quill pen brushes softly against a hand as it writes the words that mean the difference between life and death.

That angel of his, who was just enough of a bastard to know that the soft phrase, "I'll never speak to you again" is the greatest threat he ever needs to make.

And so Crowley gathered himself against the pain tearing into his legs and reached up, grasping for something that's always been beyond his reach before, as far beyond his reach as being able to openly love his bastard of an angel, and his fingers closed on the impossible.

I will give you, his heart echoes in reverberations 6000 years strong, all the time you need.

** Today **

"You don't have to sit apart, you know," Anathema pointed out, settling on the other side of the picnic blanket with Newt. Behind them, the Them splashed in and out of the stream. "We know you're together."

Both Crowley and Aziraphale looked up from where they were sitting almost an armlength apart, a distance that they'd gravitated to over the centuries. Or more precisely, they were spaced at exactly the point where the distance that Crowley needed for his eyes to actually focus on his angel met the closeness that allowed Aziraphale to bask in the love radiating off his wily serpent.

They tossed fond glances at each other, read the matching contentment, and turned back to the humans.

Aziraphale said, "Thank you for the thought, but we are fine."

"So, when are you two getting married?" Anathema wanted to know. Newt nodded in agreement.

"Hm?" Crowley stared at them from behind his glasses. "Why would we get married, again?"

"Because you love each other. Obviously."

"What?"

Anathema gave him a long look. "I _can_ see auras you know. You two - yours weave into each other."

"Yeah, no, I meant why get married _again. _I thought the whole blasted point was it was a one and done thing?"

The humans stared. "What? When?"

Aziraphale smiled softly. "Crowley slipped a ring on my finger and said 'I do' nearly 4000 years ago, didn't you, my dear?"

"Yep."

"Do you have any advice for us?"

Aziraphale thought for a moment, and then quoted softly, "Be kind to each other."

Crowley pulled a face as if he tasted something foul. "Angel, if you end up like the last person who gave that advice, I swear..."

Aziraphale reached over and laid his ringed hand on Crowley's knee. Crowley's words died off in a splutter, and a fond mock-scowl. Then his mouth softened into an equally fond smile, and he took the hand in his, bowed over it like an Arthurian knight, and kissed Aziraphale's ring. It was the sort of kiss that had once signalled courtesy and politeness, but above all, respect, allegiance, and devotion. In some places, it still did, and Aziraphale's cheeks reddened a little.

Adam came bouncing over and grabbed Crowley's free hand, "Come on, want to show you something." He pointed to something mid-stream.

Crowley laughed and stood up. With a snap of his fingers, his shoes and socks were set aside, and his trousers were rolled to the knee. Pale scars lapped up over the edges of Crowley's feet, and climbed his ankles high enough to smudge the tip of the sword and the tail of the snake on his tattoo, but he paid them no heed, splashing into the water with the children.

Aziraphale watched him go with open, unguarded, fondness on his face, half lost in the memory of the Blitz night where Crowley had walked down an aisle for him and saved his books into the bargain. Just one more thing to keep just between them, it had been at the time, and he guarded that privacy with all he had, even to wearing socks into the bath. There was absolutely no need to display to all of Hell exactly how entwined the two of them were, after all.

And now?

Now we will have, his heart echoes in a whisper like turning pages in a never ending story, all the time we want.


End file.
